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Anita Marie Giddings
Sherry Stone Clifton
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Published:
February 5, 2008

Oil Painting For Dummies

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Overview

Nobody ever said that oil painting was easy. But it gets much easier and a lot more fun when you follow a step-by-step approach that starts you off on the right foot, helps you build your skills one at a time, and gives you plenty of exercises to develop your craft. That’s what you’ll find in Oil Painting For Dummies.

Completely free of arty jargon, this full-color guide has all the hands-on instruction you need to master the basics. You’ll see how to plan a painting, build an image in layers, mix colors, and create stunning compositions. You’ll also find everything you need to know about oil paints, solvents, and pigments; brushes, palettes, and painting surfaces; and how to keep costs down at the art supply store. Discover how to:

  • Choose the right supplies
  • Set up your studio and care for your equipment
  • Handle your materials safely
  • Develop your design and composition skills
  • Make practice sketches and studies
  • Use broken stroke, dry brush, glazing, scraffito and other brush strokes
  • Try out different compositions
  • Mix any color you want
  • Simplify tricky still-life subjects
  • Paint landscapes and common objects out doors
  • Paint portraits and the human form

Complete with handy color chart, basic materials list, and a very useful viewing square, Oil Painting For Dummies is the fun and easy way to discover your inner artist!

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About The Author

Anita Giddings and Sherry Stone Clifton are award-winning artist-educators who have made careers out of teaching beginning artists of all aspirations.

Sample Chapters

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oil painting for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

When you're ready to start your oil painting project, be sure to gather and organize all of the necessary supplies. If you're trying to decide on colors or want to mix your own colors, refer to the color wheel for help. Making and using a viewfinder will help you stay focused when painting a still life. And as with most things, a little maintenance love goes a long way: Your brushes will last longer if you clean and maintain them properly.
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When you’re ready to call it a day learn how to properly clean your oil painting brushes so they stay in good shape and can be used over and over: Use a paper towel to wipe off any paint solids from your brushes. Using a jar of solvent, swish your brushes around and tap off the excess solvent on the outside edge of the jar.
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The best brushes for beginning oil painters are probably china bristle brushes, which are made from natural pig hair. They're tough and durable enough to stand up to the oil paint and still clean up nicely, and they make a strong mark on the canvas.You'll also see sable brushes. They're softer and more delicate and very expensive, and they require more care.
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Because human flesh runs the color gamut from light to dark and pale to brilliant, recreating flesh tones for your oil paintings can be one of the most difficult things to do. Many recipes for flesh tones exist, but here are the basics you need to know.Human skin is made up of reds, yellows, and blues — the primary colors.
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One of the advantages of painting in oil is that you can work in layers of color. The big overall term for this technique is glazing, in which you can see two distinct colors at the same time.In the following sections, you can explore some interesting properties of oil paint. Because oil painting owes a lot of its knowledge to the Renaissance artists, you get to discover some fancy Italian painting terms as well.
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You already know famous painters like Leonardo da Vinci, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Claude Monet; well, here are four well-known artists that you may not be so familiar with. Look them all up and don't pass over any just because you don't like to paint the same subject matter. Be like a sponge and soak up what they can teach you.
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Once your oil painting work area is prepared and you’ve selected an area of your still life to paint, a viewfinder is a useful tool for composing a strong picture. A viewfinder crops out the areas of your still life that you’re not going to paint and keeps you focused on what you want to paint. Use this figure as a template for making your own viewfinder.
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When you're ready to start your oil painting project, be sure to gather and organize all of the necessary supplies. If you're trying to decide on colors or want to mix your own colors, refer to the color wheel for help. Making and using a viewfinder will help you stay focused when painting a still life. And as with most things, a little maintenance love goes a long way: Your brushes will last longer if you clean and maintain them properly.
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Before you begin an oil painting project, make sure you have all the necessary supplies and get organized to avoid disruptions. Use this list as a guide for assembling the most useful oil painting materials: Oil Paints (in 37 ml Tubes) Cadmium Yellow Light (hue) Cadmium Red Light (hue) Alizarin Crimson Ultramarine Blue Mars Black Titanium White Yellow Ochre Cerulean Blue (hue) Other Necessary Supplies and Equipment Gamsol or Turpenoid, 16 oz.
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Oil paint developed in the early 15th century in northern Europe. Until that time, artists primarily used tempera, an egg-yolk-based paint. Artists "discovered" oil paints when they began adding linseed oil to the egg tempera to make the colors transparent.This discovery was a great leap forward for artists. The linseed oil allowed for a buildup of transparent layers of paint to create subtle and glowing colors.
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Keep this wheel handy when you’re working on your oil painting to remind you which colors mix to make other colors and which hues are complementary. Mix the two colors on either side of the color you want to make that color. To make tints, you make pure versions of basic hues and then add white to them. You make shades by adding black or complementary hues to the pure hues.
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